Evan and I are making our way to New York today, and will (believe it or not) be on television for the next three days in a row. For details, check out the book's page.

I don't want to say they couldn't find anything to write about in the local news today, but this kind of makes me wonder.

There's such a cult of celebrity, and in most cases, it's so hollow.

Actors and athletes and people who are famous for attending parties. This one dates that one, that one leaves his wife for the other one, and honestly, it's all spectacle, because none of it matters.

And then you have your Christopher Reeve.

I can remember thinking at one point, even when I was pretty young, "That is the best-looking man I have ever seen, just empirically." I mean, come on. I'll grant you that he's precisely my particular "type," as far as what makes me go all googly-eyed, but every once in a while, you just see a guy who makes you go, "Damn."

Furthermore, Superman is a much harder movie to make than people think. Think about the cold slickness of a movie like Spider-Man. Think about the flops like Hulk and all that. No one has ever really gotten the tone exactly right quite like they did in the first two Superman movies. That pair of movies is so affectionate, and so lovely, and so funny, and so silly, and so rich with myth. And oh, so very swooningly romantic.

It's hard, getting Superman right. The easy part is looking gorgeous in the cape, just uncorking those sky-blue eyes like you don't even know you're doing it. What made Reeve so good, I think, was partly the way he inhabited the Clark Kent half of the equation. He was so ridiculous, with the giant glasses and that enormous suit packing that enormous frame . . . it's such a dumb story, you know? Glasses, and . . . poof! Nobody can tell. Being profoundly silly and being a lusty matinee idol at the same time is a hard climb. Reeve was one of the only people I've ever seen get it really right. I mean, think about the later Dean Cain incarnation -- I loved that show, but Clark was already hot in it. Cain could never have really made Clark a dork. Christopher Reeve's Clark was a dork.

For him to have a paralyzing injury almost seemed like something headline writers made up to entertain themselves at a party. What would you write if the guy who played Superman wound up in a wheelchair, unable to breathe on his own? It was too suggestive, too self-consciously ironic, too obvious. I mean, who would believe that? Honestly, who would believe it?

No matter how brave they are, most brave public figures you read about don't really affect your outlook. I can think of two in my lifetime who did. The first is Alex Deford, the daughter of sportswriter Frank Deford, who died of cystic fibrosis when she was eight. Alex and I were almost the same age, and I read her dad's book about her probably when I was in high school, and she just always stayed with me. The other one was Christopher Reeve. There was something about . . . not just the activism, though yes, that, too. There was something about the way he played the hand he was dealt without either claiming he didn't mind -- he was pissed, and he was sick of not being able to walk, and every goddamn day he was trying to change the situation -- or sinking into sadness.

It's just such a shame. You have things you just hope you'll get to hear someday, even though they don't seem likely -- that Sars found Don, that Jacob Wetterling came home, and, for me, that Christopher Reeve turned out to be right, and it's a good thing he kept up all that hard freaking work, because today he got up and walked, and there he is, and look at him. I really hoped. Foolishly, probably, but still.

I guess that to me, the lesson of Christopher Reeve is that any hand is playable. No matter what you've built your life on up to a particular point, any hand is playable. You can be a guy who rose up as a gorgeous, athletic actor, and you can be paralyzed from the neck down, and you can have a meaningful, rich life after that. You can have taken from you everything that outside appearances would suggest you've worked your whole life to achieve, and you can accomplish most of the most meaningful things you'll ever do between that time and the end of your life. And in that sense, he really is an extraordinary story. I will miss being reminded, but will try to remember.